The Magic Speech Flower eBook

“But,” went on the old swallow, “our
foreparents learned their lesson, and since that time
we always bring up our children to be very obedient.
No doubt you have noticed how very well they mind.”

[Illustration]

XIV. LITTLE LUKE AND A-BAL-KA THE CHIPMUNK

One of little Luke’s best friends among the
wild folk was A-bal-ka the Chipmunk. He was a
dainty little fellow about five inches long, with a
tail of the same length. His coat was of a yellowish-brown
color, with black stripes running down his back.
This fine, striped coat made him look much prettier
than his cousin Mee-ko the Red Squirrel.

He was a clean, jolly, little chap, and very fond
of singing, though he knew but two songs. One
was a sharp chip, chip, chip, which he would sometimes
keep up for a long time. At a distance it sounded
like the call note of some bird. The other was
a cuck, cuck, cuck, which sounded much like the song
of the Cuckoo. A curious thing about this song
was that one could scarcely tell where it came from.
Little Luke was often deceived by it. Sometimes
when it sounded as if A-bal-ka was near by, he was
really a good way off, and when it sounded as if he
were a good way off, he was really close by.

Beside these songs, A-bal-ka had an odd way of saying
chip, chur-r-r-r-r, when he was scared. This
meant, “I am not afraid of you,” and he
never said it till he was safe in some hole where no
one could get at him.

A-bal-ka never harmed any one, nor did he scold and
steal like Mee-ko the Red Squirrel. Yet he had
many foes. Ko-ko-ka the Owl, Ak-sip the Hawk,
Kee-wuk the Fox, Kag-ax the Weasel, Ko-sa the Mink,
and A-tos-sa the Snake were always ready to pounce
upon him at sight and make a meal of him. Even
Mee-ko was not to be trusted. Sometimes he would
chase A-bal-ka and rob him of the nuts which he was
carrying to his storehouse. He would have robbed
the storehouse, too, if he could have got into it.
But A-bal-ka’s door was too small, and his hallways
too narrow for Mee-ko.

Little Luke knew all about A-bal-ka’s underground
dwelling. The way he found out was this:
Uncle Mark and Sam the hired man were digging stones
on the hillside in the edge of the woods for the foundations
of a new barn. While at this work, they uncovered
the home of one of A-bal-ka’s brothers.
It was made up of a long, winding passageway, ending
in a sleeping chamber, near which was a storehouse,
and in this storehouse there was a large quantity
of nuts. These nuts were all good ones. The
greater part of them were little, three-cornered beech
nuts, which the squirrels like better than anything
else. In all there was as much as half a bushel
of nuts, enough to last a chipmunk all winter.
The bedroom was a neat, little, round chamber, nicely
filled with leaves, grass, and moss. In such
a house as this, with its store of nuts, a chipmunk
could live snug and warm all winter long and come
out sleek and fat in the spring.